Last month Robert Francis Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV, was elected as the new pope to take the place of the late Pope Francis, and he will be the first American pope.
Pope Leo XIV was born in 1955 in Mercy Hospital in Bronzeville, Chicago. However Pope Leo also spent time on the north shore of Boston, when he attended Merrimack College in 1977, where he studied mathematics and science. He then received his Master of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1982 and later that year he was ordained as a priest.
Pope Leo XIV grew up in Dolton, Illinois, a small suburban area of Chicago. Pope Leo XIV is known by his friends and colleagues as a kind-hearted, gentle and modest man, especially while navigating important decisions.
Pope Leo XIV spent a lot of his life in Diocese Of Chiclayo, Peru where he served two terms as a provincial supervisor, taught canon law at the Major Seminary, and soon became the Apostolic Administrator and Bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo, later stating “that my heart was always in Peru and always in the missions.”
Pope Leo XIV would go on to serve almost two decades serving the people of Chicago before returning to the states to get his Master of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago.
Then he moved to Rome and became a cardinal within the Roman Catholic Church.
